Backlash against regeneration report grows

Michael Gove set up Policy Exchange

Thursday, 14, Aug 2008 12:00

The backlash against a report which called for people to move from poor northern cities to London has triggered a massive backlash from the Conservative party, which has close links with the thinktank which produced it.

Michael Gove, shadow education secretary and the founder of the centre-right Policy Exchange which produced the report, told the BBC: "One of the great things about thintanks is they are there to think the unthinkable.

"Many of the arguments in this report are completely wrong. The author, a well respected academic, is not a Conservative, I think he's a members of another political party.

"The Conservative party doesn't endorse its views, far from it."

Yesterday David Cameron was forced to completely disassociate himself from the report, which, in a cruel stroke of timing, was published as he made a trip up to the north west.

"This report is… rubbish from start to finish," he said.

"It certainly won't become Conservative policy.

He added: "I think the idea that cities cannot regenerate themselves… is just nonsense and I think that people should see this report in that way."

The report called for a million new houses in London, Cambridge and Oxford, to prepare for a massive period of internal migration.

It argued urban regeneration projects had failed and workers would be better off moving to the south where cities have more skill-based opportunities.